Encircling all pregnant women, children and families at ZSFG with the resources and care to allow them the best chance for success.

The mission of the Solid Start initiative is to promote health and health equity by developing and evaluating innovative models of integrated care for pregnant women and families with children 0 – 3 at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. This includes ensuring that the social, legal, mental health and behavioral needs of families are incorporated systematically into quality care delivery across ZSFG clinical settings.

Over time, the Solid Start Initiative will serve as an innovation hub whose aim is to facilitate best practices, improve data collection and evaluation, attract funding and promote model dissemination to strengthen, sustain, study, scale, and showcase best practices within ZSFG, the broader San Francisco safety net, and regional and national communities.

Supporting Solid Start

The Solid Start Initiative has been generously seed funded by a private philanthropic gift. To learn how you can support Solid Start click here.

Why Solid Start Matters

Many families who receive care at ZSFG experience profound psychological and social stressors associated with chronic exposure to poverty and trauma. Our patients are either publicly insured or have no insurance at all, and many lack access to basic material resources such as housing and food. These stressors have been clearly linked to a variety of negative results including adverse birth outcomes, decreased readiness for Kindergarten, lower educational achievement over a lifetime, and overall poorer health status as children and adults. ZSFG minority and low socio-economic status (SES) women often experience myriad competing stressors and structural barriers that increase their physiological and psychological risks and make it difficult for them to get the support they need in the perinatal period.